The Base Breaking Character is any character within a piece of media that are heavily contested within their respective fanbases, meaning that they have both a vocal fandom and a vocal hatedom.
Overview
- The character must have a vocal following as well as a vocal hatedom that actually splits the fanbase into these two factions. Simply not caring about a character doesn't make a character base breaking. If a character was polarizing in one season or installment but gets either a much better or even worse reception later on, to the point where the division between fans and detractors is resolved for that character, they do not count.
- The debate must have little to no middle ground: most of the work's fans must have a strong opinion, positive or negative, about the character in question. It there are only vocal minorities that debate on the character, it won't be counted towards actually break a base, but it must be strong enough to actually create a rift.
- They need to inspire a vicious conflict. Bringing up their love or hatred of a character should carry a strong probability of turning the discussion into a debate. If most members of the two or more factions don't care enough about the issue to argue their position, that's a sign that the conflict is not particularly vicious.
- The character must have a sustained base of fans and detractors. Obviously, whenever a new character is introduced, or an old character does something that would spark different strong opinions that the fans are going to talk about it for a while. The discussion must continue to go on for a long time, but if it dies down after a while, then there is a chance that the character isn't that divisive.
- To avoid going overboard with knee-jerk reactions, wait until two weeks after the character's introduction before adding them to the wiki. Adding them before that will result in the character page being marked for deletion.
- A character can not be mostly hated for intended reasons. See examples here.
Possible Reasons a Character Can Be Base-Breaking
- Comic Reliefs that various fans find to either be actually very funny or outright irritating in their eyes.
- Characters who get too much exposure in the series is also a contributing factor when that character ends up overshadowing other characters who should be given more focus; fans either can't get enough of them and are always happy to see them again, or the detractors are very tired of them due to them finding their inclusion to be unnecessary and want someone else to take the spotlight for once, so they can get a break from them.
- Tragic characters who can come across as genuinely sympathetic and relatable to fans, or some of them will find the character to be too angsty when the character ends up overdoing the drama about how they handle their hardships. Alternatively, they may not find the character sympathetic.
- Ship wars between a faction of shippers and their fellow rival shippers within the fandom, to which they make the character they don't like a prime target of their ire, through making them the antagonist or supporting antagonist to the ship that they support.